Extinguishing fires is a profession. Guarding a brand perhaps is too. Because just like fire, communication spreads at lightning speed. One expression becomes two, two become ten and before you know it everyone is telling the same story… but just a little bit differently. How do you ensure that a brand remains recognisable, without losing the scope for personal interpretation? So how do you become master of your own brand? That question brought us to the table with Brandweer Brabant-Noord.
Table of contents
For Brandweer Brabant-Noord, this project was about more than a contemporary look and feel. The foundation was already there. The challenge lay in creating cohesion, direction and recognition within the region.
"We actually already had a corporate identity."
It might not be the answer you expect when you ask why an organisation is embarking on a branding process. But that is precisely why that sentence stuck with me.
Sitting on the other side of the table is Imca van Dijk, communications team leader and strategic communications advisor at Brandweer Brabant-Noord. After all, the organisation had a national corporate identity. There were guidelines, colours and logos. Everything was arranged on paper.
However, in practice we saw that it wasn't always used properly,” she says. “This resulted in a hodgepodge of content. In addition, a number of resources and a corporate style manual for our own region were missing. We wanted to move towards a more professional and contemporary look and feel.”
A great opening statement. Not because it was about a corporate identity, but because it says something about how organisations develop.
As an organisation grows, its communication naturally grows with it. New colleagues join, new projects start, new resources are introduced and new ideas emerge. Everyone tries to present the organisation in the best possible way from their own role. That is usually done with the best of intentions. Only, along the way, everyone also brings their own way of working. Before you know it, small discrepancies arise. A presentation gets just a slightly different layout. A flyer uses a different font. A social media post looks different from a brochure. On its own, it doesn't amount to much. Put together, it slowly forms a new image of your organisation. And that happens unnoticeably.
A phenomenon that occurs more frequently. Organisations come in with the request to “do something with the corporate identity”. That sounds like a design question, but in this case it wasn't. A corporate identity is at most the place where it becomes visible that an organisation is in need of more direction. And Imca said that that need had existed for some time.
“The desire to professionalise the corporate identity had actually existed for some time. But previously, there was a lack of time to tackle this properly. In the summer of 2025, we decided that we really had to get to work.”
It certainly sounds familiar. Almost every organisation has a list of plans that everyone knows are important. It's just that daily practice almost always wins out. Until a moment comes when you decide it's time to step off the train for a moment and take a fresh look at what you're actually doing.
Build first, test afterwards
The process may have gone a little differently than you would expect. Many branding projects begin with a workshop, moodboards or a pile of post-it notes on the table. We did it the other way around.
We started by further developing the existing brand story and corporate identity. We brought structure to the collateral, fleshed out the brand book, and created concrete applications for the region. Not to lock everything down, but rather to have something tangible to discuss with one another.
Because you can discuss an idea endlessly. About something you can see, much less so. That worked nicely. It provided a sense of direction during the discussions and presentations that followed.
Work underway
During various sessions, we discussed identity, recognisability and the role of communication. What needs to be preserved? What are people proud of? What kind of image suits Brandweer Brabant-Noord? And just as importantly: do others recognise the brand story too? We deliberately tested the latter.
Imca told something lovely about that.
“Coming together to create a widely supported brand story. By also testing the story with partners and constituents, we arrived at a recognisable, unique and distinctive story. That was a wonderful process.”
And that word ‘lived’ makes the difference. Because a brand story is only strong when people recognise themselves in it. As an agency, you can write a wonderful story, but if the organisation doesn't see itself reflected in it, they remain just words on paper. Or in this case letters in a Word document, and then it simply won't work.
Because colleagues, partners and supporters became part of the process, something emerged that is much more important than buy-in. Ownership emerged.
Collaborate
“We experienced the collaboration with BRANDBITS as very positive. They contributed great ideas, there were clear agreements and good insights. What we particularly liked was the atmosphere in which we worked together.”
That is perhaps the greatest compliment you can receive as an agency. Because ultimately, you never build a brand alone.
Certainly not within an organisation where so many people are working towards the same goal every day. Then you have to be able to challenge each other, sometimes take a step back and, above all, keep listening well.
And we feel the exact same way about that. Of course we enjoy making beautiful things. That gets our creative juices flowing. But ultimately it is never about our work. It is about the organisation still benefiting from it years later.
Like the fire brigade
A corporate identity may look ever so convincing in a presentation, but ultimately what matters most is what happens as soon as colleagues start working with it. Are the resources clear? Are they actually being used? And perhaps more importantly: do people recognise themselves in it? According to Imca, that's all sorted.
“So far, everyone is enthusiastic about the new corporate identity and the available resources.”
As we read it, everyone wants to crack on with it. And that's a cracking starting point.
From that moment on, people start using the assets. There are new campaigns, presentations, events, job vacancies and internal communications. Only then do you see whether a brand is strong enough to be used every single day. A strong brand is not created at the moment a brand book is delivered. It is created in the moments that follow. When dozens of people, spread across an organisation, effortlessly make the same choices without thinking about it too much.
Then you know that a visual identity is no longer a collection of assets. Then it has become part of the organisation itself.
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